A Vegetarian and an Omnivore // Living in Harmony

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This post is one part ode to one of my favor summer meals and one part cautionary tale. I figure that this blog is about my life, including some of the great meals in it, so I will start with a brief account the day when I spent inadvertently spent $17.72 on 0.57 lbs of cheese. [Oopsie.]

It was a typical Saturday morning. We started our day at the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market. I determined my mission that day was to purchase the components of a summer sandwich for our lunch. At the time, our garden still had a few weeks to go before it would have much to offer us. I bought vegetables, bread, and then we left the market and looped our way up Grand Avenue to the Saint Paul Cheese Shop. That place is pretty neat. Sampling is encouraged, so we tasted several paper-thin wisps of cheese the cheesemonger shaved neatly off of several wheels of cheese and dropped into our extended hands from the forked tip of the blade of his cheese knife. I let my guard down. It is atypical for me to make a mindless splurge without glancing at the price per half pound. I was in a cheese-induced stupor when I asked for a small wedge of Marcel Petite Comte raw cow’s milk cheese from France, and a wedge of Terchelling Sheep’s milk cheese from Holland. I’m sure there are people who routinely spend far more than this on cheese in any given week. I’m not knocking it and I might do it again at some point. The difference will be that I do it intentionally. As a consolation, at least the cheese was very, very good.

Whew. Now that I’ve made that confession to my friends and readers, let’s make a sandwich! A Summer Sandwich is quite simply a sandwich with any combination of meat or vegetarian meat substitute, seasonal vegetables, cheese and sandwich spreads piled on top of nice bread.

I sliced a grainy loaf of bread and served the bread and cheese with our own cheese knives on wooden cutting boards. We eat most of our meals al fresco on our patio. It has been 90+ degrees farenheit there lately, but it is still very pleasant in the shade of a Maple Tree canopy.

I filled a platter with sliced cucumber and tomato, garden lettuces, piles of deli turkey and tofurky, along with bowls of mayonnaise and grainy dijon mustard, and placed salt and pepper shakers on the table. The secret to the perfect summer sandwich is bringing out whatever looks good and fresh, and let each person assemble the sandwich they desire.

If Freud were here, he’d say, “a sandwich is never just a sandwich.” It is the meal I ate on pebble beaches out of a cooler with my parents camping in Door County, Wisconsin in grade four. It is the BLT’s that beckoned numerous cousins, Uncles and Aunts to my Grandma’s farm house every July when the tomatoes were all ripe at once. It is the meal of lettuce, ham, turkey, tomato and cheese sandwiches on good sandwich bread that we shared with friends from Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saint Paul and Minneapolis on a lakeshore in Northern Minnesota after a long, hot day on the lake last year over the 4th of July long weekend. It is the halved baguettes piled with cheese, sliced tomato and a pile of pršut [for the meat eaters] that we ate on a secluded pebble beach a few months ago in Croatia.

What is one to serve on the side? Well, nothing—any decent summer sandwich is in itself, a square meal. Or, if the mood strikes, some salty-crunchy potato chips, leftover potato salad out of the fridge, deviled eggs or summer fruit would all be the perfect compliment. On this particular day we rounded out our plates with bright, rainbow radishes that were too pretty to slice or even to remove the stem. Sure, they could have been thinly sliced and piled on the sandwich, but they were refreshing, spicy perfection and a visual treat perched on the side our plates.

A Summer Sandwich is simple perfection. No matter what fresh fixings are available, where you are, or what time it is, a sandwich satisfies hunger. A sandwich feeds a crowd with varied tastes, comes together easily and is a perfect meal to eat outdoors on a hot July day.

And the cheese?

We’re still working our way through it, and savoring every little morsel–we figure it cost us about 8 cents per crumb.

Summertime is a season and a mindset for me. It is a season to avoid being booked and busy as much as possible, to allow time to be free to savor summer’s simple pleasures. Over the weekend, this included a trip to the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market, a meal outside on the patio at a favorite restaurant, picking a few weeds in the garden, inviting my cousin over to hang out in our back yard, working up a sweat doing yard cleanup, going to the pool for a swim and sitting in the sun porch listening to rumbling thunder and watching rain pour down, giving our garden a thorough soaking.

The summer mindset is also reflected in the food we eat. We like to eat outdoors in our back yard on the patio as much as possible. The availability of a great variety of fresh produce at the market and from our garden shapes our menu. We make frequent use of the grill. Grilling has the multiple benefits of allowing us to cook outside on the patio, avoid heating up the house and further influences our food choices toward simple, classic summer fare.

One classic summer food staple that I’m thrilled to see back in vogue are deviled eggs. Why wouldn’t these re-emerge and get trendy? They are perfect, tasty bites, extremely simple and they can be made with all kinds of interesting ingredients. I’ve seen deviled eggs with crab meat, bacon, capers and even caviar-topped deviled eggs on food blogs and restaurant menus. I like a classic deviled egg the most, and I don’t follow a recipe. I boil, cool and peel the eggs, mash the yolks and mix in minced onion, a little grainy Dijon mustard and just enough light mayo to make them creamy. I attempted to pipe the filling back into the egg white halves from a pastry bag, but I chose too small a tip to allow the filling’s grainy mustard to squeeze through, so the piping experience started out with a few pretty, piped deviled eggs, then an explosion, followed by me filling the rest of the eggs with a teaspoon. Garnish is a must, especially with the teaspoon egg filling-method. In the off-season, I’m still a fan of a sprinkling of paprika, but in the summer, chopped chives or dill are my go-to garnish. I call the dill from our garden “Electric Dill” because it is so bright and fragrant, and the dill flavor just pops- electric!

Today was one of those days that I was half-way between two dinner ideas. Bjorn had thawed some lean ground beef raised by his uncle, and I had a hankering for a veggie burger with all of my favorite burger toppings, but also a salad. From what I’ve been reading, it is better not to eat bread and high-glycemic, addictive [delicious] carbs at every meal. The idea of a Cheeseburger Salad was born. I am sure I’m not the first to think of it. Mine ended up somewhere in the realm of California Burger meets Mushroom and Swiss, but the topping possibilities are only limited by your imagination–avocado, fried egg, pickles, sauerkraut and crispy bacon all come to mind. The basic premise is to deconstruct your favorite burger, up the veggie count, leave out the bun, and have yourself a great salad.

Bjorn grilled up a burger for himself, and a veggie burger patty for me, and topped both with thinly sliced provolone cheese. We sautéed mushrooms with some onions on the grill’s side burner, and served the burgers and sautéed mushrooms and onions on a bed of lettuce leaves with sliced tomato from the market. As a dressing, we used a little leftover creamy taco sauce that I mixed up for another meal which consisted of smoky chipotle and garlic salsa mixed with a little light sour cream.

We rounded out the meal with a few bright red radishes from the farmer’s market. We are both obsessed with farmer’s market radishes at the moment. They are brighter and spicy, and of no comparison to most radishes I’ve tasted from the grocery store. I’ve been keeping a bowl in water in the fridge so that they are ready for snacking and ready to be served at any meal, including breakfast! I cannot wait until radishes from our garden are ready to eat.

I’m sure I’ll make Cheeseburger Salads again, and will certainly make more deviled eggs. Even with the richness of a deviled egg, and melted provolone, the meal felt just little lighter. After the deviled egg filling vs. piping bag incident was cleaned up, the meal came together quickly, giving us time to sit back and watch the cardinals hanging out in the grass.

Lest my readers think that I’ve quit cooking, I am taking a break from my series on our recent restaurant experiences to share a peek at our breakfast this morning.

I am one of the lucky kids who got to be with my Mom in person this weekend and because I really am one of the lucky ones, my Dad and Bjorn were there too. My parents and I have always been a tight-knit little trio, and I’m thankful every day that Bjorn has made us into a fabulous foursome. We get along well. My parents drove us around town yesterday helping us finish some last-minute shopping for a big trip we depart on this Wednesday. We enjoyed some nice meals out, good talks, some time in the yard and somehow when they left, the house was a little neater and better decorated. I have a wonderful Mom! Thank you!

This is a day that we make a point of showing the precious women in our lives– our mothers, grandmothers, friends, cousins, aunts, mothers-in law and grandmas-in law — how much we love and treasure them. I dedicate this post to all of the kids celebrating their Moms today, and to all of the Moms who I hope are feeling loved and getting treated to something special. For my Mom, the woman who lives an inspired life and spends her time making it beautiful and going to the end of the earth for the people she loves — thank you for showing me how I want to live. Thank you to all of the Mom’s in my life for being the true examples of love, courage, generosity, inventiveness, selflessness and of course, awesomeness! I know some amazing Moms, and I have one! You are all a blessing!

Being a good daughter is easy with my parents. Sometimes when they visit, Bjorn and I prepare a fairly elaborate repast so that they get in on our cooking adventures. In contrast, one of the highlights of this weekend was recovering from the shopping expedition (shopping is not my forte) with beer and Cheetos and chips and salsa on the patio. Not only do we get along, but my parents like to do pretty much the same thing we do on a Saturday afternoon. They are easy-going which makes them good parents and good guests.

Even with a pre-trip fridge-purge going on I still managed to make breakfast. It is Mother’s day, after all. When I got up, I ran out to the yard and snipped some things that went to seed last year and grew up on their own: dill, chives, lettuce and a radish. I won’t get the veggie garden planted until after we’re back from our trip, but that hasn’t stopped it from shaping our recent meals of its own doing.

I rinsed the garden produce and let it dry and decided to make a salad. For the salad, I rinsed and drained a can of chickpeas, sliced a cup of grape tomatoes, a ball of fresh mozzarella and a few bunches of baby spinach from the farmer’s market that I had washed and dried and torn into bite-sized pieces. I tossed the veggies, cheese and chickpeas in a quick vinaigrette made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped chives and dill, a shake of Mrs. Dash, and some fresh ground black pepper.

I made some cinnamon-raisin toast and poached eggs. I also made bacon in the oven, which is the best food preparation idea since sliced bread. You simply place bacon on a rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet and place it in a cold oven. Turn the temperature to 400 degrees farenheit and check the bacon after 12 minutes. Between 12 and 20 minutes the bacon will be done to crispy perfection, or at least that’s what the omnivores reported.

This afternoon I headed out to the back yard to hang out with the bright red cardinals to let the growing things be my muse.

We aren’t sure what we are doing to attract these noble red beauties to our yard, but we love their company and their song, and we hope that we won’t scare them away.

One of the things I picked up for our trip when I was shopping this weekend was a watercolour sketchbook and a small handful of watercolour pencils. I haven’t done anything more than doodle in a margin for ages, so hopefully I can shed some rust and relearn a few tricks from high school art classes.

Our Iris are doing well. My iris is truly an heirloom. The Iris were first planted in the yard in the house where my Grammie was born, they moved several times with my Dad’s family in the 1960’s and ’70’s before being planted in the back yard of the house I grew up in. They bloomed there for about 18 years and then they moved south to my parents home on the lake in 1995. Last summer I transplanted 20 or 30 bulbs to our back yard.

You won’t be hearing from me much or at all for a few weeks, but when we’re back, we’ll have seen some new horizons and have stories and inspiration to share. In the meantime, above is a sketch and an observations of our Iris. You never know, I might manage one more post before we leave…

Here is a little peek at how things come together around here. We live, I snap a few pictures and sometimes sketch one in watercolour and then put it all on the laptop with my words and thoughts and hit “publish”! It is a fun and happy life.

If you are anything like us and you like to eat 3 square meals a day, it tends to be a good idea to throw a salad in the mix once or twice a week. The other night I came home with just such a meal in mind. I started with an inventory of the fridge. I gathered up the remaining vegetables that we had on hand, and alongwith a few items from the pantry, this is what I put together for our supper tonight.

Once I had assembled all of the vegetables I heaped the lettuce and spinach into a medium-sized mixing bowl, began rinsing and chopping the other vegetables, and placed them in the bowl. At the same time, I started a small saucepan of water heating on the stove to cook the eggs. When the water came to a boil, I placed 4 eggs in the sauce pan of water, reduced it to a simmer, and set the timer for 6 minutes. When the bowl seemed to be filled with an ample rainbow of vegetables, I whisked together the ingredients for a spicy and flavorful vinaigrette in a separate bowl.

While I worked on the salad dressing, Bjorn split several yellow, eggy buns in half and topped them with thinly sliced, reduced fat Colby-Jack Cheese, and then placed the buns on a foil-lined sheet pan in the oven at 350 degrees for a few minutes to melt the cheese. He also heated a small bowl of leftover spaghetti sauce in the microwave, for dipping the toasted cheese bread.

When the eggs had cooked 6 minutes, I removed two for our supper and carefully peeled them. I let the remaining eggs continue to cook a few minutes longer so that they would be hard-boiled, making them easier to pack for our lunches tomorrow.

I drizzled the dressing over the bowl of salad, tossed the salad gently with tongs, and served it on a platter. I placed the avocado slices on top, and gently sliced the eggs just before serving to expose the warm, soft yellow yolk. I’m seeing “soft eggs” everywhere, in blogs, such as this tasty-looking and classic presentation on Smitten Kitchen, in magazines and in restaurants on bruschetta, pizza, and salads. Talk about having a classic food item go trendy! I’m all for it though, eggs are a versatile, simple yet exquisite food. Bjorn added about half of a can of tuna to his plate, and mixed it into the salad. Adding tuna to the omnivore version of this salad added protein and healthy omega 3 fatty acid, a heart-healthy fat. The Avocado and the Extra Virgin Olive Oil in the dressing also added heart healthy fats to both of our plates.

The spinach, romaine, sprouts, carrots and broccoli gave the salad a nice crunch and were full of antioxidants, calcium and potassium. The white beans and egg added a contrasting soft texture to the salad, and protein which made the salad a hearty meal. The vinaigrette had a pleasant kick of dijony, red-pepper heat, and set off the flavors of the soft egg, avocado and red onion. The toasted cheese bread made a yummy side dish dipped in the warm spaghetti sauce. We enjoyed it all.

The salad was huge and made plenty for two servings at supper time, two servings for lunch the next day with a little more to spare. The salad was hearty enough to be a satisfying, complete meal, and had a healthy rainbow of veggies, good sources of protein and healthy fats to make it a nourishing meal, nutritionally speaking. It is wonderful to toss together a variety of vegetables and pantry staples into a salad. It makes for a simple, healthy and satisfying supper that makes you feel good, and that you can feel good about eating. Give it a try!

It is a good indication that we are getting pretty low on groceries and fresh produce when I decide what is for dinner by googling the few ingredients we have left to find an idea. Tonight, I poked around the kitchen and found a can of white beans, a potato, and a half a bag of frozen corn to work with. Those three ingredients sounded like a good base for a soup. I wasn’t feeling like a chunky Tuscan White Bean Stew, or a creamy Rosemary White Bean Soup even though they looked tasty. We didn’t have half the ingredients for this luscious looking Corn Chowder with Chilies by Pioneer Woman and we wanted something lighter. As far as I can remember, I don’t think I’ve ever combined white beans, corn and potato in one pot, but it seemed like these 3 pale, starchy comforters had to go together. I thought “there must be a recipe for this white bean, corn and potato chowder!” I immediately found two, fairly similar recipes that sounded tasty, [here and here]. I took cues from both recipes, made a few adjustments of my own and ended up with a soup that was healthy and warming that we both enjoyed. First, I assembled my ingredients.

I think it is a good sign about a recipe when the ingredient list is short. For one thing, in a simple recipe each ingredient plays a vital role in the dish as a whole. There is also a better chance that your pantry and fridge will contain what you need so you don’t have to run to the store. Most importantly you won’t have to pull out your hair trying to follow a complicated recipe or spend your evening chopping and measuring a zillion ingredients. My White Bean, Corn and Potato Chowder contained:

One cup of Frozen Corn.

1 16 ounce can of Cannellini Beans. — I happened to have a large can of beans so I used it, but you’d be fine with a 14 ounce can. If you are up for preparing dry beans, which sadly, I am not, you should use about 1 cup of dry beans, soaked and cooked in water until tender.

1 Yukon Gold Potato washed and chopped.

1/2 of a yellow onion, diced.

1 carrot, peeled and diced — I ended up using only one carrot, even though my photo contains two.

1 stalk of celery, chopped. –I didn’t have any celery, but normally, I would include it. Diced Onions, Carrots and Celery, or a mirepoix if you are cooking in French, makes a solid aromatic base for almost any soup or sauce.

A splash of skim milk, or half and half, or heavy cream, depending what fits into your diet.

A small amount of Olive Oil for sautéing the veggies.

Salt and Pepper to taste.

We have 2 people eating in our house most nights, so I try to cut soup recipes down to 4 portions, so that we each get to have a hearty bowl for supper and a smaller bowl for lunch the next day. It took me two years to figure out that I need to cut down most recipes. Having a few frozen portions is great for lunches at work or an easy supper, but a freezer can fill up fast in the winter when I feel like making a new pot of soup a few times per week. If you have a bigger head count, or feel like stockpiling soup for lunches and lazy days, you can easily double or triple this recipe.

Once I had all of the veggies for the chowder chopped, I began by sautéing the onion and carrots. I rinsed the cannellini beans, and mashed about half of them on a cutting board with a potato masher. I did this for several reasons. Since I wanted the chowder to be light and healthy I decided not to use half and half or cream in my chowder which are traditional chowder ingredients. Mashed white beans added velvety texture to the soup liquid that it would otherwise lack without cream. I used a potato masher because I don’t have an immersion blender* and lugging out the blender or food processor to puree half of the soup is far too much effort for me on a Tuesday night. The potato masher works quite well to create a rustic creaminess and it cuts down on dish washing which is also a plus. When the carrots and onions began to get soft in my enamel dutch oven, I added the rest of the ingredients except the milk and garnishes. I let the soup simmer for a good half hour to 40 minutes. This gave me time to set the table, check Facebook and chop up some grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and leaves of romaine lettuce for a small salad, along the lines of a caprese, minus basil. I dressed the salad with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salut herb mixture. Once the chowder was hot and all the flavors combined, I removed the pot from the heat. I mashed the entire mixture of veggies little a more with the potato masher right in the soup pot to allow the carrots, corn and potatoes to add body to the liquid in the chowder. Right before serving the chowder I stirred in a splash of milk. I served the chowder in a small bowl with the salad on the side of the plate.

On top of Bjorn’s salad I added a few this slices of Sopprasetta, a dried, cured Italian salami.

We loved this chowder. It was warm and satisfying, but still light and healthy. It will reheat well for our lunch, and we will able to eat the whole pot in two meals. This meal made good use of the last few vegetables in the house. Even if my fridge is fully stocked, I’d make it again.

Summer is over when I say it is! Or at least when the weather starts behaving as though autumn has arrived. As long as I am picking delicious tomatoes from our garden daily, and walking outside comfortably in flip flops at 5 p.m., it is still summer in my books. No matter what people say, I am not going to yank out the perennials and I’m going to keep watering our vegetable garden until it frosts. I am not going to eat like it is October yet either. I’ve got months and months of soups and roasted vegetables ahead of me, and so for this week, while tomatoes are still bountiful, I’m going to live it up, and enjoy the last precious days of delicious tomato season. A tomato may just be the most tasty and versatile of all of the summer fruits. I made myself a Toasted Caprese Sandwich that I ate for lunch when I was home alone. Since I was home alone, there is no meat-eaters counterpart to the sandwich in this post.

If it isn’t obvious, a meat eater would probably enjoy this sandwich just as I did, or with the addition of crispy bacon, and perhaps mayonnaise instead of basil and mozzarella if that person is a BLT purist.

A sandwich that starts with a tomato like this is impossible to mess up. This one came from our square foot garden in the back yard. I see some amazing heirloom tomatoes at the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market, which we check out most weekends. We just walked right by them this year because we have had a regular supply of our own. To start with, I assembled all of all of the elements of a caprese. I sliced up the tomato and some fresh mozzarella and coarsely chopped some basil, also just-picked from our garden. I toasted the bread only slightly. I like to pile on the toppings, and so I needed the bread to have a little bit of give to keep it all together. I think any version of a tomato sandwich should be eaten on either really fresh bread or toasted bread. Without bacon, all of the sandwich elements are cold, and that little bit of heat from the toasted bread lets everything get cozy and comfy and meld together rather than being one ingredient stacked on top of the next. In addition to the delicious sandwich fillings being a sure win, this sandwich was destined to succeed because it is made on City Rye. City Bread is my favorite bread in the whole world. It is made in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where I grew up. I stock up on Rye and Pumpernickel every time I am there, and when the freezer is empty of City Bread, it is time to go back, or to entice friends down to Minnesota for a visit.* I don’t think the people of Winnipeg know how lucky they are to have such a prevalence of wonderful bread available in almost all of their grocery stores. I think it has something to do with the large Ukrainian population in the city. When the Ukrainians immigrated to Winnipeg, they brought with them wonderful bread baking which is now engrained in the city’s dietary culture. I am certain that there are other great breads like this in the world, but in Winnipeg, there is no searching. City Bread is available almost everywhere. There are even a few other brands of bread that are quite good available in Winnipeg grocery stores. I grew up with City Bread, so I am partial to that particular bakery, and I accept no substitutes.

I dressed the sandwich with a olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. I used a silicon pastry brush to lightly brush the toasted bread and mozzarella with oil and balsamic vinegar. You only need a touch.

I ate my sandwich with a cup of coffee. Kind of an odd beverage pairing, I know. The sandwich was my breakfast and my lunch. A cold Diet Coke, or a glass of milk would have been a much more appealing option. This sandwich was the summer’s best.

Eggs and toast are a common weekend breakfast at our house. During the work week we both end up eating a granola bar in the car or when we arrive to our desks most days. A hot breakfast at home welcomes the weekend. Eggs and toast is still a quick meal, and the very slight effort it takes to make it yields the satisfying nourishment to remind you it is Saturday and give you the energy to have great day. Making eggs and toast for breakfast is about as simple as it gets, except if you are me. I am going through the process of re-learning how to scramble an egg. I have been scrambling eggs since I was 5 years old, and I thought I had it mastered. I cracked eggs into a bowl, and mixed them up with chunks of cheese, and cooked them in a frying pan with oil or butter, stirring them occasionally until solid. I lived under the illusion that cheesy eggs was the only way to eat scrambled eggs until I ate the Simply Scrambled breakfast at the Birchwood Cafe. In Birchwoods’ Simply Scrambled breakfast, there is no cheese in the eggs! The eggs are super fresh and a lot creamier and less solid than the eggs I’ve been scrambling for over 25 years. And they are so good! I could tell that this is partly due to using extremely fresh eggs which is something I’ve already been using for several years. These delicious, creamy, plain eggs were a mysterious new experience for me. I asked a foodie friend for his thoughts about the Birchwood’s egg scrambling technique over a year ago, and he suggested something about only having the eggs on heat for a while, then taking the pan off of the heat letting them cook themselves. I tried it, and the result was plain, unevenly cooked, verging-on-runny eggs. Next, I watched Gordon Ramsey do a demo. When Gordon Ramsey says “every time we get a new cook in the kitchen, we always asked them to make scrambled egg. If they know how to make perfect scrambled egg, you know they know how to cook properly” I am sure he is right. I don’t know how to cook properly. Since watching this demo, I’ve been undercooking eggs left and right, but using butter and a little milk or sour cream* and finishing them with fresh chives to make them “sexy.” It might be a patience issue. I’m not sure. The good news for us is, Bjorn has not had an existential crisis about scrambled egg preparation. As in most areas requiring confidence and skill, if I can do it well, Bjorn can do it better; and with a lot less effort. So we are still eating delicious eggs, scrambled by Bjorn, while I limp along re-learning out how to Properly cook something I’ve been cooking and happily eating since I was a very little kid.

There are parts of the egg and toast breakfast that I prepare that have not been called on to the carpet for re-evaluation. I have discovered that eggs and toast is another meal that a slice of tomato makes better. If you have a decent grocery store tomato, all you have to do is throw a few slices in the frying pan toward the end of cooking the eggs. The tomato gets a little softer and sweeter and picks up just enough butter or oil from the pan to make it extra luscious. All it needs is a little pepper and salt. At the height of tomato and basil season, there is always fresh mozzarella in our fridge, and so fresh, just-sliced garden tomatoes inevitably are paired with fresh mozzarella and basil, a touch of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and the usual salt and pepper. A caprese is tomato’s perfect foil. I have mentioned my love of a caprese salad and the fact that I could happily eat them as a part of three meals a day at this time of year. I wasn’t kidding. Even for breakfast. How can I resist with tomatoes like this:

It is our second year with a Square Foot Garden. Last year we planted 6 tomato plants , and enjoyed tomatoes from our garden into December. This year we expanded the garden and planted 12 different varieties. We are luxuriating in an abundance of tomatoes of all shapes, colours and sizes**. We also have 4 square feet devoted to basil. I am serious when I say I love this flavour/texture combination. It is truly a luxury to be able to walk out the back door and pick a medley of herbs to season our breakfast. This morning I picked Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, Chives, and a little dill in addition to basil.

As a nod to Gordon Ramsey and the Birchwood’s perfect eggs, today our eggs are plain, but ready to be dressed up to taste with a little grated manchego cheese and garden herbs waiting on the side of the plate***. Having both manchego and fresh mozzarella on the same plate tips the scales towards indulgence, but after a pious week of granola bar breakfasts, perfect scrambled eggs, toast, fresh herbs and a caprese with basil and tomatoes from the garden is an indulgence we can afford.

Then, there is of course, the toast. The bread today is a dense Italian loaf from the bakery at Cosetta’s Italian Market in Saint Paul.

*Sorry Gordon; we don’t stock crème fraiche in our kitchen.

**Grey squirrels have also been picking our tomatoes and eating just a few bites, much to our frustration and disgust. We’ve resorted to garden warfare. Each of the raised beds is surrounded by chicken wire. We’re using smelly garlic and peppermint squirrel deterrent sprays, and we’re both pretty good aim when we throw a shoe, but we don’t seem to be able to get the squirrels under control. If there is some kind of a secret weapon against these greedy creatures, I’d love to know about it.

***Maybe I’m not so convinced about the perfection of cheese-less scrambled eggs?!?

What do you do when you are hungry for a snack and you have a fresh baguette and all of the ingredients for the two perfect summer salads to go with it? Well if you are almost incapable of avoiding complication in the creation of even the simplest of summer snacks (like me), you make both.

Today’s summer afternoon snack started with a caprese. I think an insalata caprese would be in the top 3 contenders of foods that I’d want to have to eat on a desert island. I love them so much that when our garden is kicking out tomatoes and basil like mad, I’m eating them in as many as three meals a day. They are summer’s loveliest flavour and texture combination. A luscious tomato, cut thick, with generous slices of fresh mozzarella and just-picked basil leaves floated down upon them; finished with the lightest drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, salt and maybe a little pepper. I’m no stickler, but I will mention that these things taste like a million bucks if you’ve grown your own tomatoes and basil, or bought them very fresh from friendly farmer who has. And the mozzarella-it must be very fresh, milky and on the watery and porous side. I think the cryo-packed balls can often be as good as the packed-in-water in plastic containers from the grocery store. So many people love good fresh mozzarella that it is becoming very easy to find and cheap to buy. Enough about my caprese obsession. How about a picture of the golden tomato caprese that launched a thousand word paragraph?

This on its own is the perfect summer snack, but there are two hungry people in this house, and, I’ve also got some lovely dill, fresh eggs and lettuce, so I can’t stop with just the caprese. I boiled the eggs, or, if you are a student of Martha Stewart –hard cooked them.

Check out these gorgeous fresh eggs that I bought from a man named Fernando who raises them in the little town where I work.

For egg salad, eggs are boiled, peeled, sliced in half and ready to be chopped and combined with a little light mayonnaise, mustard, diced onion and celery and a little pepper and salt to taste, then piled on top of some lettuce and garnished with dill, both from the garden.

There isn’t much more to do then to place the plate between two hungry people to eat with baguette, or on their own. I put salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar on the table, to adjust flavours, as needed. We dove in. It was fresh, flavourful and satisfying; the perfect summer snack.

If I were a followed blogger, I’d have to apologize for the long silence. Some day! For now, it’s a good thing to have zero followers. Summer arrived, and I started filling my free moments with being outside, gardening, cookouts, trips to the lake and general summer fun and relaxation. I got re-inspired to return to our blog by an article I read recently in the Summer Made Easy Special Issue of Everyday Food Magazine called Bask Country about a tapas party with food prepared by Aran Goyoaga, a pastry chef, blogger and cookbook author, written by Jean Lear, photographed by John Kernick. I read the lines “She started blogging as a way to keep track of the baking she was doing at home….Soon her serene, light-filled aesthetic–captured by her photographs as well as her prose found a loyal readership.” Now, that is what I was thinking of when I started this blog. I immediately jumped up and grabbed my camera and my laptop. And then I encountered a bunch of boring computer and camera problems and had to save this post for another day. Problems solved… Here is my first attempt at recreating a close approximation of an authentic Chicago-style hotdog.

First, I had a little shopping to do in order to top the dogs properly. Chicago dogs come with sliced tomatoes, mustard, onions, a dill pickle spear, a funny little pepper called a Sport Pepper, and a sprinkling of celery salt on a poppy seed bun.

Its been a hot summer, so an advantage to the Chicago dog is that it can be made on the grill. I brushed the buns lightly with butter in order to help adhere poppy seeds to the top.

The meat version, served with a side of grilled sweet corn, with butter, pepper and salt, of course, and a few strips of bacon, for good measure.

The veggie version, is a close approximation of the classic chicago dog, except with with a vegetarian dog, and of course, all of the essential chicago dog fixings. I enjoyed mine with a cob of grilled corn, a slice of watermelon and cukes & onions with dill, vinegar with salt, pepper. A tasty escape to the Windy City!